Restaurant review, Caliu Thinks Small.

Next to wine bars, the most popular category for start-up restaurants the past few years has been tapas bars, and the two have lots in common. Offering small morsels of food at inflated prices, both manage to make alcohol the center of attention. Drinkers like it, but then so do foodies, because, in their concentrated goodness, the petite plates often feature big flavors. The modest portions could help you lose weight, too—if only you didn't drink so much. Among tapas bars, the game changers were Casa Mono (2003) and Boqueria (2006), which boosted the institution's image from that of an antediluvian Spanish taverna with fraying bar stools, painfully red décor, and old men wearing berets, to that of a noisy modern canteen, where younger patrons of both sexes snack lightly while drinking expensive glasses of wine. Full meals were an option at those two modern tapas bars, too, if you could only figure out how to assemble dishes of unpredictable size into a repast. But whether snacking or dining, you inevitably ended up with a check larger than you expected.

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